>>>Some commentators, including Noam Chomsky, are convinced that there is a real threat of fascism, with parallels to the decline of Weimar Germany and the rise of the Nazis.
Not what Chomsky said at Left Forum and other places. Chomsky is arguing that like in Weimar, the center cannot hold (tip o' the hat to the Yeats poem) and that the populace will shift either to the Left or Right. The Left needs to get mobilized. (I corresponded with Chomsky to make sure).
>>>There is certainly no reason to be complacent about these developments, but the comparison with Germany in the 1930s makes little sense. Far from being a mass movement, the journalists Anthony DiMaggio and Paul Street describe the Tea Party as "a top-down interest group led by national and local political officials and financed by corporate America" and "fundamentally dependent upon the Republican Party."
This is absurd. A dozen major polls and surveys show otherwise. It started as astroturf, but it is a large and widely-dispersed socio-political movement at this point.
-cb
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From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org on behalf of Joseph Catron Sent: Fri 7/23/2010 8:18 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: [lbo-talk] Are recessions better for the left or right?
An ISO response to Doug. Thanks to Louis Proyetc.
http://www.isreview.org/issues/72/gasper-crisis.shtml
-- "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað." ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk